HALF-FULL REPORT 10/22/10

The headline on this story on the front page of the New York Times Thursday read: “Coalition Forces Routing Taliban in Key Afghan Region.”

American and Afghan forces have been routing the Taliban in much of Kandahar Province in recent weeks, forcing many hardened fighters, faced with the buildup of American forces, to flee strongholds they have held for years, NATO commanders, local Afghan officials and residents of the region said.

A series of civilian and military operations around the strategic southern province, made possible after a force of 12,000 American and NATO troops reached full strength here in the late summer, has persuaded Afghan and Western officials that the Taliban will have a hard time returning to areas they had controlled in the province that was their base.

Some of the gains seem to have come from a new mobile rocket that has pinpoint accuracy — like a small cruise missile — and has been used against the hideouts of insurgent commanders around Kandahar. That has forced many of them to retreat across the border into Pakistan. Disruption of their supply lines has made it harder for them to stage retaliatory strikes or suicide bombings, at least for the moment, officials and residents said.

It’s evident New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof didn’t read the story in his own paper before writing this column.

A visitor to Afghanistan who ventures outside the American security bubble sees pretty quickly that President Obama’s decision to triple the number of troops in Afghanistan has resulted, with some exceptions, mostly in more dead Americans and Afghans alike.

When you want your commentary fact free, always think of the New York Times first.

Schadenfreude (taking joy from the discomfort of someone you dislike) is a sinful pleasure, but one to which most of us succumb from time to time.

The most delicious form of schadenfreude is when our enemies suffer as a result of a colossal, unforced error of their own.  This is why so many conservatives are taking so much pleasure in the hole National Public Radio has dug for itself.

On Monday night, Juan Williams told Bill O’Reilly on his Fox show:

"I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."

On Wednesday night, NPR fired him. Williams’ comments, NPR said

"were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR."

There are double standards at work, here, of course.  NPR has taken no action against reporters and “news analysts” who have wished for the death of Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC), described Tea Party attendees as “teabaggers,” or said savage things about Christianity.  And can you imagine the outcry if a conservative-leaning news organization had fired its only prominent black?

Bernard Goldberg said what Juan said wasn’t his real offense:

Here’s a bulletin, NPR: Lots and lots and lots of Americans feel the same way as Juan Williams. And that includes lots and lots of liberals. And probably a lot of liberals who work at NPR. Juan’s "crime" wasn’t that he said something bigoted. His crime is that he said something that liberals find politically incorrect. And that he said it out loud. And worst of all, that he said it on the Fox News Channel.

What makes this so crazy — and so sad — is that liberals are the open-minded ones, the ones who cherish the free exchange of ideas, the smart ones. And if you don’t believe me, just ask any liberal, who will be glad to tell you how smart and open-minded he or she is. But these are the kind of people who believe in "free speech" only as long as they agree with you.

Liberal Stephen Hess agrees.

It would be fascinating to see a poll of all NPR correspondents on their degree of nervousness when on a plane with “people who are in Muslim garb.” Perhaps Juan Williams, after his long and distinguished service to NPR, deserves this courtesy from his former employer.

It isn’t just that NPR canned its long time employee over a statement most regard as inoffensive, it was the way in which it was done.  Williams was fired in a cell phone call.  NPR’s chief executive, Vivian Schiller, compounded this by suggesting, in public remarks Thursday, that Williams needed a psychiatrist.   (She later apologized.)  NPR’s ombudsman acknowledged the firing was “poorly handled.”

J. P. Freire of the Washington Examiner says NPR has wanted to can Juan for a long time.

Williams’ presence on the largely conservative and often contentious prime-time talk shows of Fox News has long been a sore point with NPR News executives.

The Politico says it’s all about ostracizing Fox News.

The problem for NPR, as a source told Gerstein, is that coming out against Fox directly (which Williams’s firing, as explained in NPR’s statement, doesn’t really do) would hurt the public broadcaster’s ability to argue that it is straight down the middle — something essential for a publicly funded broadcaster, even one that gets most of its budget from private donations. Right-leaning blogs have been having a field day with PBS’s Gwen Ifill’s apparently sarcastic tweet about Sarah Palin’s “party like it’s 1773” comment, for instance. And blowback on NPR’s decision to fire Williams is already building on the right.

But it isn’t Fox News that’s being ostracized.  Media analyst Howard Kurtz said:

After watching Bill O’Reilly lead an hour of NPR-bashing on Fox News Thursday night, it’s tempting to say that the right’s reaction to the Juan Williams firing is just a tad overblown.

But it’s not. This was a blunder of enormous proportions. Even many liberals—Donna Brazile, Joan Walsh, Whoopi Goldberg—are castigating National Public Radio for throwing Williams overboard.

It would have been a mistake at any time to fire Williams for what he said, but NPR’s timing was especially bad, Kurtz said:

And in a triumph of awful timing, yesterday was the day that NPR announced a new grant—$1.8 million from liberal philanthropist George Soros to hire 100 new reporters. No news organization should accept that kind of check from a committed ideologue of any stripe. Even if every journalist hired with the cash from Soros’ foundation is fair and balanced, to coin a phrase, the perception is terrible. (This New York Times story didn’t even mention Soros’ liberal views. The guy just gave a million bucks to Media Matters. Hello?) Oh, and NPR is in the midst of a fundraising drive. Good luck with that.

NPR’s Web site crashed for a time Thursday because it was inundated with so many comments on the Williams’ firing, the vast majority of them negative.

Mike Huckabee thinks: click here 

"It is time for the taxpayers to start making cuts to federal spending, and I encourage the new Congress to start with NPR," he said.

I agree.  More importantly, so does House Republican leader (and likely next Speaker) John Boehner.

A politician wrote this:

Our federal deficit is already at unsustainable levels, and most Americans understand that we can ill afford another entitlement program that adds substantially to it. But our recent health reform has created a situation where there are strong economic incentives for employers to drop health coverage altogether. The consequence will be to drive many more people than projected—and with them, much greater cost—into the reform’s federally subsidized system.

It was not a Republican politician.

This ad makes crystal clear what’s at stake in this election: 

We’ll begin the political news in this week’s HFR with the bad, as is my custom.  There is, alas, quite a bit of it this week.

In Alaska, Joe Miller has slipped into a statistical tie with Lisa Murkowski at 37 percent each.

There are two silver linings in this otherwise poor poll for conservatives.  Here’s the first:

But the CNN-TIME poll also finds 10 percent of likely voters asked saying they’d be inclined to vote for another candidate if the write-in process required to vote for Murkowski proved too difficult.

The second is that Democrat Scott McAdam is a distant third at 23 percent.  So even if Murkowski wins, the seat will remain in (nominal) Republican hands.

In Colorado, Ken Buck bombed in his Oct. 17 debate with Sen. Michael Bennet, and that race, too, has become a statistical tie. 

Jim Geraghty of National Review noted the silver lining, such as it is, in the news from Colorado:

It’s not too late for Republican Ken Buck to fumble this, but Colorado’s incumbent Democratic senator Michael Bennet has been remarkably consistent in his polling in October: 45, 45, 45, 45, 46.

There have been exceptions to the “incumbent rule” from time to time, but if Bennet remains at 45 percent in the final polls, I’ll have a hard time seeing him jumping to a majority on Election Day.

In Pennsylvania, Quinnipiac reports the senate race between Pat Toomey and Joe Sestak is now a statistical dead heat.

The race for Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate seat is now a statistical dead heat with Republican Pat Toomey getting 48 percent of likely voters to 46 percent for Democratic U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

This compares to a 50 – 43 percent likely voter lead for Toomey, a former congressman, in a September 22 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University.

Two polls conducted earlier in the week showed Sestak in the lead.  But for reasons discussed below, I’m skeptical of them.

The silver lining in the Quinnipiac poll is:

Despite the recent Democratic lean in Pennsylvania politics, likely voters say 51 – 43 percent that they want their new U.S. senator to oppose rather than support President Obama’s policies. Voters also say 45 – 38 percent they want Republicans, rather than Democrats, to control the U.S. Senate next year.

In Ohio, a CNN/Time poll showed the race between incumbent Democrat Gov. Ted Strickland and Republican challenger John Kasich to be a statistical tie.

Forty-eight percent of likely voters in Ohio say that if the election were held today, they’d vote for Gov. Ted Strickland, with 47 percent saying they’d vote for former Rep. John Kasich, the GOP challenger, and 3 percent are undecided.

The silver lining is that a Quinnipiac poll concluded the day before showed Mr. Kasich with a ten point lead.

Republican John Kasich remains in command of the Ohio governor’s race with a 51 – 41 percent likely voter lead over Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland, statistically unchanged from Kasich’s 50 – 41 percent edge October 5, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today, two weeks before Election Day.

Kasich’s lead is built on a 59 – 32 percent margin among independent likely voters, and a 64 – 29 percent spread among white evangelical Christians, according to the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University survey conducted by live interviewers.

Washington was all atwitter (literally and figuratively) Tuesday when Public Policy Polling released a poll showing Joe Sestak leading in the Pennsylvania senate race over Pat Toomey, 46-45.
This was “confirmed” Wednesday when Muhlenberg College released a poll showing Sestak leading, 44-41.

Color me skeptical.  The PPP poll is predicated on the assumption that turnout among Democrats in Pennsylvania will be substantially higher this year than it was in the presidential election year of 2008.  That year, the Pennsylvania electorate was 44 percent Democrat; 37 percent Republican, and 18 percent independent.  PPP’s sample was 48 percent Democrat, 41 percent Republican, 11 percent independent.

Requests for absentee ballots don’t support the notion of a Democrat surge.  According to Roll Call Wednesday:

Pennsylvania voters have requested nearly 127,000 absentee ballots so far. Of that total, Republican voters made up 50 percent and Democrats made up 42 percent, according to figures collected Tuesday afternoon.

The state records show Republicans are returning their absentee ballots in greater numbers as well. The state has received about 40 percent of requested ballots, and Republican registrations outpace Democrats by 19 points, 56 percent to 37 percent, according to the state data. Absentee ballots made up 5 percent of total turnout in 2008.

There are few states that offer more competitive Congressional contests than Pennsylvania, a swing state where Democrats enjoy a 14-point voter registration advantage.

And this effort at deceit doesn’t suggest Democrats are feeling terribly confident:

Workers at Bucks County’s voter registration office fielded 70 calls on Tuesday and dozens more this past week from residents worried they wouldn’t be able to vote on Election Day.

The reason: a series of Democratic Party absentee ballot letters — under the letterhead of the fictitious Pennsylvania Voter Assistance Office — warning recipients that their ability to vote in November could be threatened.

The Muhlenberg poll won’t release its internals.  But it defies credulity to believe that with less than two weeks to go, 15 percent of Pennsylvanians are still undecided about the senate race.

This is a good time to remember Charlie Cook’s admonition:

My view is that most academic polling, as well as the polling sponsored by local television stations and newspapers, is dime-store junk.

Democrats seized on the PPP poll as a fund-raising tool.  PPP is a Democrat firm, and I think the poll was designed for this purpose, to give a boost to Sestak, whose funding from the DSCC has been cut back. 

National Review’s Jim Geraghty has a friend, “Number Cruncher,” who says all who are worried about Toomey can relax.

Your readers should calm down. This race isn’t that close, or even closing. The only thing closing is the pollsters’ prediction of who to consider a likely voter. Looking at the Quinnipiac results, I find them very encouraging for Toomey, specifically among Independents.

With less than two weeks to go, we can eschew generic polls and turnout models, and take a look at actual voting.

In Nevada’s prime swing county, Republicans are significantly outpacing Democrats in early-voting turnout, according to official statistics — a potential sign of difficulty for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as he attempts to rally his base for his tough contest with Republican Sharron Angle.

Some 47 percent of early voters in Reno’s bellwether Washoe County so far have been Republicans, while 40 percent have been Democrats, according to the Washoe County Registrar. Nearly 11,000 people had voted in Washoe over the first three days of early voting, which began Saturday.

Voter registration in the county is evenly split, 39 percent to 39 percent. The disproportionate turnout is a concrete indication of the Republican enthusiasm that is expected to portend a nationwide GOP wave.

Sharron Angle wonders how Harry Reid got so rich while serving the public.

Maybe other Nevadans are wondering that, too.

Early voting in North Carolina so far also has favored Republicans.

The largest group of early voters in North Carolina is made up of white Republican men, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Democracy North Carolina, a campaign watchdog group.

During the 2008 Democratic sweep, black Democratic women led all groups during the 17 days of early voting. But during the first three days of early voting this year, it is white Republican men.

And in Ohio: click here

In 2008, the number of registered Democrats in Cuyahoga (Cleveland) stood at 395,712 and 38.62% of them requested absentee ballots. In the same election there were 91,500 registered Republicans and 39.78% of them requested ballots. Those numbers have seen a sharp change this year with over 24,000 fewer registered Democrats in Cuyahoga and just 31.95% of them requesting ballots. Meanwhile, registered Republicans have increased by over 16,000 and 45.31% of them have requested ballots. But the stat most amazing to me is that Republicans requesting absentees jumped from 36k to nearly 49k compared to the same time in 2008.

Franklin (Columbus) has seen 155,651 absentee requests for this general election. Despite a 65/35 partisan advantage for Democrats, absentee requests are statistically tied.

The Democratic registration advantage in Hamilton (Cincinnati) sits at 62/38 in favor of Democrats and Obama won Hamilton by nearly 21,000 votes. Despite that, GOPers have requested 11% more ballots than Democrats.

Now for better news.  Carly Fiorina’s pollster has told her Sen. Barbara Boxer can’t get above 45 percent.

It is also important to note that Boxer’s negatives are fully institutionalized to the
point where she has never once broken the 45% level in terms of her ballot strength,
and there are a “hard” fifty-three percent (53%) of voters who believe it is time for a
new person.

I don’t believe this.  But if it’s true, then Democrats will have to advance the date of Doomsday on the Mayan calendar from December 21, 2012 to Nov. 2, 2010: click to view

This is just a little thing I got this morning from someone I ran into at breakfast, who works for one of the Aldermen here in Chicago but is well-connected in the Democrat fundraising machine…

Somehow, I turned the topic from the Madigan Family Maneuverings to Christine O’Donnell’s Senate race in Delaware because the guy I was talking to did a lot of fundraising in New England during the 2008 campaign and I know he “gets” states up there better than I do, having never lived there.

He told me that Christine O’Donnell is going to get VERY, VERY CLOSE to winning in Delaware but he does not think she will win. But, he emphasized, “It’s going to be scary close for Coons”.

I then asked him if he thought Scott Brown would win in Massachusetts, and he said, “No, I was surprised. I thought Coakley would win but it would be close”.

So, I’m thinking Democrats are really very scared of O’Donnell.

A datum that lends credence to this is this comment from George Stephanopoulos Wednesday.

Chris Coons changed his previous position on the Bush era tax cuts this morning telling me that he would support extending all of the tax cuts for everyone for "several years."

I don’t think the one time “bearded Marxist” would take this step unless he believes he really, really has to.

Sean Bielat probably won’t upset Barney Frank in his heavily Democrat district.  But he’s sure making the jerk uncomfortable.  Enjoy